Character Genders

[Axilus Prime]

I don't want any existing characters to change gender. It'd be weird. I do want to see a less skewed gender ratio with new characters though.

[TheGreatSpirit]

 

 

 

I always saw key to nongu as asexual or female...

asexual means "doesn't experience sexual attraction". i believe you mean agender

 

..unless of course you mean "keetongu's species reproduces asexually" which is entirely different

Since I understood that gender and sex mean the same thing, I assumed agender and asexual mean the same thing as well. I'm not a native to English, so please apologise my awful political correctness.....

 

well uh. no, actually, gender and sex aren't the same thing. but this isn't really the appropriate place for me to be explaining all that; it would be a huge digression. PM me if you're interested i guess

 

 

 

I think the English language disagrees with you on that one...

Edited October 2, 2014 by TheGreatSpirit

[TheSkeletonMan939]

People are too frightened to use the word 'sex' anymore, so they use 'gender' for everything. But yes, the two words can mean the just about the same thing.

[-DJ-]

 

 

 

 

I always saw key to nongu as asexual or female...

asexual means "doesn't experience sexual attraction". i believe you mean agender

 

..unless of course you mean "keetongu's species reproduces asexually" which is entirely different

Since I understood that gender and sex mean the same thing, I assumed agender and asexual mean the same thing as well. I'm not a native to English, so please apologise my awful political correctness.....

 

well uh. no, actually, gender and sex aren't the same thing. but this isn't really the appropriate place for me to be explaining all that; it would be a huge digression. PM me if you're interested i guess

 

 

 

I think the English language disagrees with you on that one...

 

you can throw around dictionary definitions and ~The English Language~ all you want bud, but in modern terms gender is used to refer to a person's innate views on how they identify, whereas sex refers to their biology. these two things literally Can't Mean The Same Thing, because otherwise people whose gender and sex didnt match wouldnt exist, which they do (i.e. trans people)

just something you may want to keep in mind

[Toa Chuck]

My headcannon is that MU inhabitents have no gender whatsoever, and so only indentify as one due to the culture they live in.

[-Windrider-]

While the discussion of the definitions of sex and gender is important and totally okay for BZPower, it's not really the focus of this topic.

So please keep that in mind while participating.

[Click]

Although I don't usually buy into headcanons, especially about character gender, I could see most of the Ko-Matoran/Toa and Le-Matoran/Toa as female (not Matau), just to even out the gender ratio. Though that does make Lewa a pretty stereotypical Damsel in Distress to be rescued by her Knight in Black Armor. Oh dear, I may have just invented a shipping (or whatever).

 

It would be great to have some more female characters (as long as Lego can do it right, just look at every Toa of Water ever released in set form and just try to say Lego can make feminine characters with a straight face), but it would probably alienate a lot of fans if Lego were to ever say "Okay guys, this year, Lewa and Kopaka are female because you wanted it!" I would prefer something similar to Nova Orbis, where just over years of living on Spherus Magna, somehow the Matoran became more balanced as new Matoran appeared.

 

Oh, and I can't ever picture Onua as female.

[Prime Axiom]

Matoro. Definitely Matoro. 

 

Or pretty much everyone but Tahu, Jaller, and Lhikan. 



 

[fishers64]

Or pretty much everyone but Tahu, Jaller, and Lhikan.

That would be a very strange universe. 

[Cambion]

Oh dear, I may have just invented a shipping (or whatever).

nope. trust me, that pairing's been around nearly as long as Bionicle itself.

 

 

Or pretty much everyone but Tahu, Jaller, and Lhikan.

That would be a very strange universe. 

 

not much stranger than one where only 1/6 of the inhabitants are female.

[Banana Gunz]

I'm thinking some of the Bara-Magna characters could be changed to be females. Like Tarduk maybeh? It's really disturbing how there was only ONE female in that arc.

[believe victims]

I'm thinking some of the Bara-Magna characters could be changed to be females. Like Tarduk maybeh? It's really disturbing how there was only ONE female in that arc.

 

Everyone knows that they only trashed the gender ratios on Bara Magna so they could make the gender issues worse

[Sumiki]

Not to bash anyone's ideas, but if I had to list the Mata as candidates for a gender alteration, Onua would be at the bottom.
 
That said, I've always thought Onu-Matoran to have some of the more feminine names, which is what I go by when determining gender headcanons. Dosne, Kaj, Zemya ... I know that these are minor characters, but looking through the names, Onu-Matoran seem 50/50 to me at least.

[TheGreatSpirit]

What you are thinking of is the connotation of the world to some people. The denotation of both words are, in fact, the same (also trans-sexual and transgender)

 

 

Back on topic, I am extremely against gender swapping characters, but I see no reason why new characters can't break the rule...

 

 

 

 

Edit: Please see my post above.

-Wind-

Edited October 3, 2014 by -Windrider-

[Sharnak the Bohrok Lord]

I never really saw any main characters as a different gender. The only time that I can think of is when I played MNOGII, I didn't know about the mono-gender (which I don't like either), so I pictured a few Ga-Matoran as male. I don't remember any of their names, but I thought Hali's neighbor as a friendly old man and one one cranky ga-matoran as man. Also, in MNOG, I saw all the matoran in the kohli field's stands were Hewkii's fangirls.

[Ballom Nom Nom]

I dunno... as much as I'd love to see more balanced gender ratio's I don't think it feels right to just swap genders like that for characters that already exist (except Orde, we barely know him and just... gosh, Greg, I love you but you need to recognize a mistake and change it, not accept it and go off of that).

 

I'm sure a lot of lesser known matoran from the MNOG's can be changed and no one would ever know. Many are so unwell known that they can have their genders changed real easy.

Honestly this idea baffles me. Swapping genders of characters shouldn't cause problems if the characters aren't written in a sexist manner, and doing so can help fix glaring gender disparities. I think it should be done. Have three female Toa Mata. I can easily envision any of the five guys as women, with no loss to their characters.

 

~B~

[Regitnui]

I would prefer something similar to Nova Orbis, where just over years of living on Spherus Magna, somehow the Matoran became more balanced as new Matoran appeared.

So.much this. The Agori are (in theory) gender-balanced, so why shouldn't the matoran gender ratios change to match? Eventually, the Matoran could become Absurdly Agori Robots (Ridiculously Human Robots translated across culture).

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

okay so, i was thinking "lets even out the toa team! make Lewa and Pohatu girls too!" but then i was like "er, no. Lewa and Onua? Onua and Pohatu?"

 

so now, oops. sorry.

 

only Tahu and Kopaka are guys. take that as you will. :u

[Irrie]

I don't want any existing characters to change gender. It'd be weird. I do want to see a less skewed gender ratio with new characters though.

My thoughts exactly. I am all for creating new characters with female genders, but altering the ones that I've come to know as male is not what I want at all. 

Tamaru is male. Onua is male. They were created male, so they should stay male. I'm not trying to attack anyone's fun with headcanoning, but making new female characters is the path that I find much more easier. 

[The Skakdi Chronicler]

Funny thing is, is that as a kid, when I played the mnolg, I always associated the masks AND tribe with genders, like only ga-matoran wearing a Rau, Huna, or Kaukau are female (I was about three, don't judge me). But, back on topic, Id I had to choose to swap character genders, It would be Nidihiki and Vamprah, because up until recently, I thought Nidhiki was female, and until today, I thought vamprah was female.

[Tattorack]

I seriously do not understand this "head canon" business at all.

Why follow a story, just to ignore it and make your own thing from it.

Whats the point in that at all?

 

I follow Bionicle because I love Bionicle. That means I love it for what it is.

I can understand fans make "head canon" to explain things to make better sense of loop holes or things that are generally left unexplained.

I cannot consider somebody a true fan of something if that person is just changing the story to suite him/her better.

[Thormen]

 

I don't want any existing characters to change gender. It'd be weird. I do want to see a less skewed gender ratio with new characters though.

My thoughts exactly. I am all for creating new characters with female genders, but altering the ones that I've come to know as male is not what I want at all. 

Tamaru is male. Onua is male. They were created male, so they should stay male. I'm not trying to attack anyone's fun with headcanoning, but making new female characters is the path that I find much more easier.

 

Agree 100%. Gender in the Matoran Universe is essentially a basic aspect of personality and nothing more, I don't want to see characters changing their personality just like that. If the story team should change a character's gender and act like the character just basically keeps the same personality, they'd essentially reduce the entire notion of gender in the Matoran Universe to a simple label.

 

Funny thing is, is that as a kid, when I played the mnolg, I always associated the masks AND tribe with genders, like only ga-matoran wearing a Rau, Huna, or Kaukau are female (I was about three, don't judge me).

LOL, I was 13 and I did more or less the same For me all the Ga-Matoran AND all the other Matoran wearing a Kaukau were female. Not the ones wearing a Rau or a Huna though, just the Kaukau. The Huna was male for me since I knew Vakama was male, and the Rau just basically looks like a bald guy with a beard

 

But, back on topic, Id I had to choose to swap character genders, It would be Nidihiki and Vamprah, because up until recently, I thought Nidhiki was female, and until today, I thought vamprah was female.

I initially also though Vamprah was female, so he is still kinda feminine in my mind.

 

I seriously do not understand this "head canon" business at all.

Why follow a story, just to ignore it and make your own thing from it.

Whats the point in that at all?

 

I follow Bionicle because I love Bionicle. That means I love it for what it is.

I can understand fans make "head canon" to explain things to make better sense of loop holes or things that are generally left unexplained.

I cannot consider somebody a true fan of something if that person is just changing the story to suite him/her better.

I was gone for four years, then I come back and there's suddenly a "head canon" hype going on I don't understand what's so special about it either, to me there's basically two kinds of storyline: (1) the official canon and (2) your own imagination. Take Vamprah for example, as I said earlier in this post I initially thought he was female. That was my own imagination obviously, since he's male in the official canon. So when I found out he was male and what his personality was like, the "I think he's female" idea got relegated to the back of my mind and I accepted he was male. I kinda view it like a misconception I had. If I want to continue with a storyline in which he is female, that's not in any way canon for me, that's simply using my imagination.

 

I understand that people enjoy using their own imagination and not just follow the storyline, but I don't consider that a special kind of canon. People use their own imaginative storylines here all the time, in the BZP library, Artwork etc. People are also free to use their own imagination when they play with sets or simply imagine the BIONICLE storyline in a different way. I just don't see how it's a special kind of canon if you do so.

[Seltz]

I've got an idea I wanna run by y'all.  I've always found the whole single-gender tribe thing kind of a silly decision, and I'm writing a story that changes a whole load of stuff just because of muh headcanon.

 

So basically, should I make all tribes dual-gender? 

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

 

If the story team should change a character's gender and act like the character just basically keeps the same personality, they'd essentially reduce the entire notion of gender in the Matoran Universe to a simple label.

 

Earth to BZP, Earth to BZP, this is exactly how gender and personality coexist in literally all iterations of the universe.

[Thormen]

Earth to BZP, Earth to BZP, this is exactly how gender and personality coexist in literally all iterations of the universe.

No it's not. Every time Greg has been asked about the significance of gender without sexual reproduction in the MU, he's stated that female characters in the MU are female because they have a female personality. In fact, the significance gender has regarding a being's personality was made very clear in chapter #2 of the Yesterday Quest when Orde's origin story was featured: there was a problem with his personality, namely his temper, and the Great Beings decided to avoid that problem in the future by making the rest of his kind female.

[Noxryn]

I seriously do not understand this "head canon" business at all.

Why follow a story, just to ignore it and make your own thing from it.

Whats the point in that at all?

 

I follow Bionicle because I love Bionicle. That means I love it for what it is.

I can understand fans make "head canon" to explain things to make better sense of loop holes or things that are generally left unexplained.

I cannot consider somebody a true fan of something if that person is just changing the story to suite him/her better.

 

The fans who make headcanons to suit their own preferences for the story are no less fans than you are, assuming otherwise is simply putting down these fans' creative efforts for no good reason. Either way, it's a Lego line. Lego puts an emphasis on this thing called "imagination" and, if anything, people who are reimagining Bionicle to fit their liking are acting completely within the bounds of it. If you don't like creative endeavors, works, art, story, retellings, and only think the hallmark of "true fans" is memorizing and categorizing everything, then, I don't want to be a "true fan" by your definition as that sounds incredibly dull.

 

Swapping character genders isn't meaningless, either. Some people actually like feeling as if the line includes them, but I guess they can't be a "true fan" if they don't accept the 300+ male characters as "100% always canon" in comparison to the 30~ or so female characters (or the 0 or so non-binary, agender characters). 

[Irrie]

don't accept the 300+ male characters as "100% always canon" in comparison to the 30~ or so female characters 

 

Say you work at a job and there are three women there and fifteen men. Since there isn't an equal amount of men to women, the manager makes a couple of the guys wear women's clothing, go to the female restroom, and addresses them by 'Miss', simply because they appear to be feminine in the manager's eyes. 

 

The fact that there are more males than females is an unfortunate and sad aspect about the Great Beings' design for the MU. Why they built it that way still remains unknown, but it can't be helped. Trying to remedy this aspect by changing the personalities of characters that we've all come to associate as male is a great way to ruin them and their stories. 

 

As a side note, anyone who says that Bionicle is unfair towards females CLEARLY hasn't researched into Vortixx culture at all. 

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

 

Earth to BZP, Earth to BZP, this is exactly how gender and personality coexist in literally all iterations of the universe.

No it's not. Every time Greg has been asked about the significance of gender without sexual reproduction in the MU, he's stated that female characters in the MU are female because they have a female personality. In fact, the significance gender has regarding a being's personality was made very clear in chapter #2 of the Yesterday Quest when Orde's origin story was featured: there was a problem with his personality, namely his temper, and the Great Beings decided to avoid that problem in the future by making the rest of his kind female.

 

 

umm, i don't think i'm exactly able to put into words what's wrong with this description without great misunderstanding,

 

however. i feel someone else in here would probably be knowledgeable enough to not start a large-scale debate and derail the topic. :0

[believe victims]

 

Earth to BZP, Earth to BZP, this is exactly how gender and personality coexist in literally all iterations of the universe.

No it's not. Every time Greg has been asked about the significance of gender without sexual reproduction in the MU, he's stated that female characters in the MU are female because they have a female personality. In fact, the significance gender has regarding a being's personality was made very clear in chapter #2 of the Yesterday Quest when Orde's origin story was featured: there was a problem with his personality, namely his temper, and the Great Beings decided to avoid that problem in the future by making the rest of his kind female.

 

 

Ah, yes, a "female" personality. Because women totally don't have as broad and varied personalities as men amirite? all women have a single personality. that's so true.

[Thormen]

umm, i don't think i'm exactly able to put into words what's wrong with this description without great misunderstanding,

 

however. i feel someone else in here would probably be knowledgeable enough to not start a large-scale debate and derail the topic. :0

Ok, I can't say I understand 100% what you're implying but I do have an idea, and I definitely understand the part about not derailing the thread. So let's not talk about the specifics of what gender should imply in the Matoran Universe: the Great Beings decided after Toa Orde to make all Ce-Matoran/Toa/Turaga female. We don't have to talk about the reason they had for doing this or whether it was justified etc. Instead I would like to point out that they did in fact change the gender of all subsequent Ce-Matoran. How is this possible if there isn't some kind of concept of gender other than being a simple label? Apparently it's not as simple as just referring to Ce-Matoran as "she" instead of "he", Orde clearly states that all subsequent Ce-Matoran were made female, implying that there is some kind of switch inside the Matoran's AI that is set to "male" or "female". (I'm not trying to exclude anyone here or make any kind of point on the nature of gender, I'm simply drawing a conclusion from storyline sources as to how the AI of Matoran works, which does not necessarily resemble that of humans, but also not necessarily doesn't)

 

Edit: I see Lucina ninja'd me: Lucina, that was definitely not what I was trying to say. I was simply going by what storyline sources tell us. I'm not going to explain exactly what I have to say on this subject on BZP, but if you want to discuss this subject with me, PM me and we can discuss it via E-mail or something.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Thormen

[Rahkshi Lalonde]

the great beings switched it with the magic of sloppy writing and poor understanding of gender. from what i gather. :u

 

anyway: i believe the topic of this topic was more on the topic of specific characters and gender-related headcanon, to avoid serious derailments.

Edited October 4, 2014 by Rahkshi Lalonde

[-Windrider-]

This is the last warning to stay on topic: "But are there any specific characters that you see/wish were a different gender in the story, and if so, who?"

[Thormen]

This is the last warning to stay on topic: "But are there any specific characters that you see/wish were a different gender in the story, and if so, who?"

the great beings switched it with the magic of sloppy writing and poor understanding of gender. from what i gather. :u

 

anyway: i believe the topic of this topic was more on the topic of specific characters and gender-related headcanon, to avoid serious derailments.

Okay, I get that you don't like that part of the Yesterday Quest and that's OK. If we can't discuss this without going into the nature of gender identity and derailing the topic then let's not discuss it.

 

Let me rephrase my original point here: Apparently some people want to change some characters' genders in their "headcanon", they can have reasons for this that I will not go into. For similar reasons, I feel like changing the gender of characters is changing the character in a significant way without adequate storyline explanation, which is why I agree with Axilus that TLG shouldn't change existing characters' gender but instead create more new female characters. Therefore, my answer to the OP's question is "No."

[ALVIS]

I could see pretty much any male character, from Kazi to Teridax, as female or another gender, so I'm not picky about who gets switched and who doesn't. I just want the gender ratios to be less preposterously skewed.

[Regitnui]

"Women are people too." I'm not going to be so definitive as to say there are no 'female' or 'male' personalities, but I will say that there are feminine and masculine personality traits. Do we see the difference? Certain parts of a personality can be categorized (debatably), but a personality as a whole cannot.

 

Bloodlust is not feminine. There's nothing stopping a woman from being more eager to crack skulls (masks) than her male friends.

 

Pacifism is not masculine. Again, a man who avoids conflicts at all costs isn't exactly a strange thing.

 

To get back on topic: the Votixx are hardly proof of gender equality: it's a matriarchy written by a teenage boy who's just been through a messy breakup expanded from only one storyline character in the laziest of society-building methods: "Oh, yes, they're all like that." It's sloppy writing, so what's stopping the fans who love and enjoy the work from calling it out and perhaps even fixing it?

 

Roodaka herself could easily be male. Ambition and selfishness are both masculine and her defining traits. Sidorak's cowardliness and manipulativeness are both feminine, and so he could be she. There were go, switch the genders and the plot of Web of Shadows remains unhanged.

[-Windrider-]

Since the last warning has been ignored, the topic will now be closed.